By @cryptoctopus and @clains
First off, i want to raise my hat to @clains who has been working hard to gather the information found in this update. As stated, the goal is to inform the community on what the people who are the backbone of Steemit are doing, to glorify the good actors and to expose the not so good.
What are Witnesses?
For those who already know, jump ahead to the update. For those who do not know, here is a short explanation.
Steem currently has 19 witnesses that validate the transactions of the network (you can see them here) and they get compensated for every block of transaction they validate. It's a very important job and it is literally the backbone of the steem blockchain (the technology that powers Steemit.com).
Witnesses have to run and maintain steem servers, update them, and provide reliable price feeds for the Steem Dollars. Witnesses are voted into position and can also get paid to provide services that benefit the steem platform, such as code review, documentation, developing new services, or helping out in the community.
A witness node in the top 19 get paid a fixed amount of about 1 blocks a minute or 1371.42 blocks/day assuming no misses. Payments are ~1430 steem per day (paid in VEST aka SP). At $2 per steem that's about $2860 per day each. However, when it comes to salary the following was brought forth in the comment in the first edition and it's important for everyone to take this into consideration:
The payout of Witness is more akin to stock options than a salary or fee for service, because it is tied to the future value of Steem and can't be cashed out (more than 1% per week). This is a good thing because it means the interests of witnesses are aligned with the interests of Steem in terms of long term value (and increasingly so as witnesses are more vested). However, it does mean that you can't reasonably say to witnesses, "You are being paid all this money, so you better go and spend it every week" because no one is receiving that in actual, spendable, payments. Expecting strong qualifications, competence, engagement, attention and effective representation are entirely reasonable expectations however. There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty as to how much they will truly profit in $USD.
Witness Update
@svk
https://steemit.com/bitshares/@svk/bitshares-gui-release-2-0-160813
@roadscape
No updates to steemd.com this week; began work on a separate app that will index posts and provide a variety of discovery/filtering tools for power users.
@pharesim
i don't have content for a post. Working on the things mentioned before, updates will come when something serious happened. (See previous edition)
@smooth
I'm very accessible and anyone who wants to know what I'm doing can ask. Sure. Anyway, I'm doing much the same as last week, no change. (Communicate via steemit.chat)
@riverhead
https://steemit.com/rocketchat/@riverhead/witness-riverhead-update-week-of-august-1st-2016
@xeldal
No update provided.
@bhuz
I plan to do an update for my #findandreward project, but I am not sure I will be able to
do it before your witness update. Tuesday I started to power down part of my witness pay, this means that next week I will be able to distribute the first reward as stated on my Find And Reward post.
I would also like if you could publish the link so more people can comment and point to me
contributors that deserve the rewards for their work.
I need the help from the community to be able to find and Reward the worthy people and make this little project works.
Link to the post:
https://steemit.com/findandreward/@bhuz/letsfindandrewardsteemscontributors
@arhag
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@arhag/witness-arhag-update-aug-1-2016-to-aug-8-2016
@wackou
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@wackou/version-0-4-2-of-the-btstools-released
https://steemit.com/steem/@wackou/btstools-development-bounties
@complexring
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@complexring/witness-update-august-4-august-11
@blocktrades
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@blocktrades/blocktrades-witness-report-for-2nd-week-of-august
@abit
No update provided
@silversteem
No update provided
@datasecuritynode
https://steemit.com/peerplays/@peerplays/announcement-bts-snapshot-date
@steemd
No update provided
@joseph
I do work on weekdays, so it would be nice if the witness update is pushed to a weekend. I will make the post tonight, but not sure it will make it.
@kushed
https://steemit.com/steem/@kushed/steem-now-on-noble-blockchain-payment-app
@clayop
https://steemit.com/witnesscategory/@clayop/witnessclayopupdate201681201687
@lafona
No update provided
Witness Proposal
@geoffrey
https://steemit.com/witnesscatagory/@geoffrey/witnessgeoffrey
@someguy123 (powerful server)
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/someguy123-witness-thread
@coinz
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@coinz/coinz-witness-application
@roelandp
Comments
Many witnesses didn’t feel it was urgent or important to update the community about what they are doing. This is why i would love for people to show their support for witnesses who took the time to update us. We are doing this to separate the weed from the good grain and your participation and theirs is the only way to optimize the political structure and the backend of steemit.
Conclusion
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Does the update above inspire confidence and competence to you? Please vote for them. Please contact them via steemit.chat if you want details or want to complain about a lack of transparency. We are increasing the pressure for detailed updates as time goes on. We will demand competence and RESULTS from our witness to ensure the best long term success of this platform.
Perfect timing! By coincidence I was just going manually through the top 50 deciding who to vote on.
I could only find 11!!
I'm sure much more are doing good work however I'm relying on their activity/ communication on Steemit.
I'll use the info you've provided to refine my list. Thanks for this!
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Exactly.
You are doing a great work helping us decide for whom to vote.
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Great job all you guys are doing. Thanks a heap for making it all possible :)
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This is a great service you are providing, I'm always checking your witnesses exposed update. Keep up the good work.
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Thank you so much! This is one of my favorite Steemit reports to read :)
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very interesting to read, thanks for sharing about witnesses @clains
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Thanks for putting this together! And for mentioning us below 50-ers, that's very helpful (with the new write-in feature on the witnesses page this is great timing)!! My link is broken though =*{. It should be this. Thanks again!
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Nice post @clains :)
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@chains Thanks for keeping us in he loop. Just a quick heads up, but for some reason @bhuz's link to the #findandreward project is kicking out a 404 error. Not sure if there was a typo but it's a dead link in either case.
It's not really a huge deal just something I noticed when I tried to click on it in case someone wanted to fix it. I'm sure we can just search for the hashtag to find out about the project so no biggie.
Thanks again for the info so we can make informed votes on our choice for witnesses. ;-)
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Hello @clains, thanks for doing this!.. let me know if/when you do the back-up witnesses post, I would be happy to chat with you!
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Thank you for your work witnesses. Keeping it cool while being spammed from thousands of users. Hats off.
And now read my story, I wrote about witnesses.
Just kidding, I don't read it, I hate begging.
But we really wrote such story lol :D
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awesome witness team work
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Most of my posts aren't directly labelled as a witness update, but I am on my way to becoming one, and I'm working on various things, including making SteemDNS accessible to the every day user, and maybe adding more to the STEEM.CENTER wiki.
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Thank you for providing the layman's explanation of what (and who) witnesses are. I understand it much better now. Even though I read the Steemit whitepaper, it was quite technical in a lot of areas, and I didn't really get what witnesses were, or what they did. I do now, and it's genuinely helpful information.
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This series are great, and I think making similar series for as "developers exposed" would be great to see what developers are doing.
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I love how you do this @cryptoctopus and @clains.
I only have two ideas, before this gets cemented I would consider changing the name to "Witnesses Unmasked", the reason for this is whenever I see this post in my feed, I am like "Oh crap big news someone is scamming us". So, changing to Unmasked (Or something similar) in my opinion is more accurate to what you are trying to do.
Besides, you could have a section called "Exposed" when someone is found and exposed for doing something dodgy. Just my 2c.
Keep up the good work!
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many many thanks to sharing with us that's great knowledge. thanks a lot. I am so happy to read it such a great post..
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